The European roller is a brilliantly coloured migratory bird facing significant welfare and population threats from farmland intensification across its Mediterranean and Eastern European range.
European rollers require a specific combination of resources — dead insect prey such as large beetles and grasshoppers, open ground for hunting, traditional farm trees for nesting — that are becoming increasingly rare across intensified farmland. Welfare impacts operate at the population level through reduced breeding success and migration mortality. Illegal hunting and trapping on Mediterranean migration routes causes direct individual welfare harm to thousands of birds annually.